Thursday 6 June 2024
Wartime Reticence
I don’t have any family anecdotes about D-Day and only a few about WWII. Although my father and the uncles we saw most often all fought in the war, they were reticent about it for their entire lives.
My father was in the Royal Navy, having joined a few years before war broke out. He had a few amusing or interesting stories to tell, but not much about the conflict itself. From a few clues, I know he was involved in something hairy in the North Atlantic for example, but he never said what.
I also know Dad’s ship destroyed an enemy radio station situated on a small Atlantic island because he mentioned it a couple of times. He related it as a bit of gunnery fun though. It must have been more than that, but he never elaborated.
Dad’s generation were often reticent about the grim and bloody aspects of war and didn’t pass on the horrors of it to youngsters. It was something adults didn’t do.
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19 comments:
Yes, my father didn't much like discussing The War - or more precisely he didn't like discussing being in action. I can remember his mentioning the stench of dead men and dead horses in the Falaise Gap. I can also remember how glad he was to have been in Churchill tanks rather than Shermans. He had a story about an American colonel who over-ruled him with a consequence of many entirely unnecessary casualties. And that was about it.
He did once - though just once - allude to what he saw in Belsen. Dear God!
I don't think any of my family were involved in D Day. My Dad drove an articulated lorry for the RAF, and although he spoke of picking up crashed planes with bodies inside, I don't think the war had a negative impact on him. For many of his generation, it was a real eye-opener; it got them out of their humdrum existence and introduced them to new people and different ways of doing things.
Same here with my father ... he had the albums of shots from the various war theatres but that was about it. Service medals too.
Yes, my father had jolly stories to tell of naval life, but spoke little of the war — what little I know of that came via my mother. As she said long after, he never spoke about it.
dearieme - we had an English teacher who was said to have seen Belsen. He never spoke about it though and we never cared to ask.
Sam - I think the RN and the war were an eye-opener for my Dad too. After the war while still with the RN, he was in the USSR for some kind of official naval visit. He soon saw what Stalinism was, even though intellectuals back home didn't.
James - that's all my Dad had too, some photos and service medals. Even they had disappeared when we cleared the house out.
djc - sounds like my father's stories - jolly anecdotes. My mother may have known more, but she died before Dad so never reached a stage where she might have told us more.
My father had a reserved occupation, so was never called up and in fact didn't even ever have to do National Service. We all suspect he was in something super-secret (possibly chemical warfare since he was a chemist...) but he never spoke of it and took his secrets with him in 2022.
My grandfather fought in the trenches in the first bout, but would never speak of it at all.
We lads at school never knew our French Master had been a fighter pilot in the war and had been awarded the Légion d’honneur - until his obituary was read out in Assembly one day.
Peter - it sounds as if your father may have been bound by the Official Secrets Act and whatever it was applied for life. I never really knew my grandfather, but I know he was in the trenches. I don't know if he talked about it, but I never heard anything at all about his time there.
DJ - crikey, the modesty is something we forget, as if it was just a job. We had a junior school teacher who brough a throat microphone into class to show us how it worked. It didn't occur to me until later that he had probably acquired it in the RAF during the war, but he didn't say where it came from.
We all knew that our French teacher had been "in the Resistance". Since he was British I imagine that the accurate version would have been that he was in the SOE and fought alongside the Resistance.
I worked part of one university long vacation in the lab in a paper mill. There was a strange locked room off the lab. Eventually I was told: it was the room where German currency had been forged during the war. I was impressed that it was felt wise to keep it secure and in order "just in case". I never mentioned it to anyone else until long after The Wall came down. Just in case.
dearieme - there is probably an interesting history behind that locked room. Forging enemy currency sounds like a fine idea, but making use of it could be tricky. It would be interesting to know how they did that - must look it up.
@AKH: the paper mill in question would have been a sensible choice of where to locate the forgers because, unlike many mills, it had always produced many different sorts of paper. It may be that they also turned out non-German currency - I don't know what was used in, say, Occupied France, Vichy France, the Low Countries, etc. But I'm pretty confident that my leg was not being pulled.
dearieme - it sounds so plausible that I'm sure your leg was not being pulled.
A relation of mine was a Chief Petty Officer in battleships during the war. His ship returned to Portsmouth and the company sent to Plymouth to go into another battleship - except him. He had to remain to hand the ship over to a new ship's company. By the time the handover was complete, his old ship's company had sailed. So he was ordered to barracks and his former ship also sailed.
One of the ships went on a Malta convoy. They were the lucky ones. The other was part of Force X.
Yes, same with my Grandfather. There was one slightly amusing story that he told a couple of times, but otherwise he was very tight lipped about the war. I never really learned anything until after he died
decnine - I don't know much about Force X, but my father was Chief Petty Officer, mostly in cruisers I think. He was stationed in Malta after the war and my mother joined him there. It was where I was born.
Bucko - I can piece together more of my father's experience by going online with the few clues he gave out. I think it was far more dramatic than he ever said, but now it's partly guesswork.
Again, same. What I have pieced together, I'm probably glad he didn't tell me when I was a child. Explains a little about why his hands always shook though
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